Press

media stories on Vancouver’s proposed Edgewater Mega-casino

This is a fairly comprehensive collection of media stories on the proposed casino expansion. For exhaustive in-depth coverage on the 2011 phase of the casino fight, see the superb series by the Vancouver Observer here and for Peter Ladner’s columns on the casino for Business in Vancouver magazine, click here. (We do not include all shorter stories on radio or other websites, due to volume and redundancy.)

2011

[For fun, please read Allen Garr’s “Casino horse has left the barn” from the Vancouver Courier, Feb 10, 2011, predicting our failure. (Similarly, this Frances Bula article.) We are happy to announce that that particular horse is back in the barn. We won on April 19, 2011 when Council unanimously rejected the casino plan. We are not disbanding, however. We remain vigilant and this website will be continuously updated on the following issues: gambling expansion in BC, the use of PavCo’s BC Place Stadium site, the issue of the stadium roof and its intimate relationship with the proposed casino, and other issues.]

April 11, 24 Hours (Bob Mackin) Marriott on board for casino proposal
““I can see why they’d be trying to play on the brand of a hotel everyone’s heard of,” said Katherine Wellburn, Yaletown bankruptcy lawyer

•• March 24, Vancouver Sun (Jeff Lee), Vancouver split over casino expansion and please see our rebuttal here. It’s important to point out that City of Vancouver residents are NOT “split” on this casino. Repeated polls (including the very Ipsos poll discussed by Jeff Lee above!) show a clear majority oppose the casino expansion. Why are Angus Reid and Ipsos Reid polling Metro Vancouver residents, not City of Vancouver residents? They are well aware that City of Vancouver residents have stronger anti-casino sentiment than the suburbs. Curious methodology. Metro Vancouver residents outside Van city limits neither live nor vote here.

Read the petition

Meta

Our Supporters against the mega-casino

To see the list of all those who supported our 2011 fight against the mega-casino at BC Place, both individual citizens and organizations, click here.

For statements and letters from some of our many supporters, click here.

WHERE THINGS STAND:
We had a victory in 2011, but what we defeated was gambling expansion from 600 to 1200 slot machines. Soon after, Vancouver City Council nevertheless passed the building at its proposed massive size, ripe for future expansion. Now, in light of the 2013 Kendall Report which shows a doubling of severe gambling addiction in BC in only 5 years, we believe City Council must immediately institute harm reduction measures if it plans to allow the relocation and building of Edgewater Casino at BC Place Stadium, in easy reach of residents and young people. Proximity to casinos is a major factor in rising addiction rates.